All right.
This will be the last poem from the first section.
And it's called "My People."
"I have longed to say my people, not because I
was born of two peoples, of blue-tiled walls and strip
malls, not because I don't know where I belong or with whom,
or worse, who I am, as onlookers have, in their pity,
proclaimed.
The lovers too, after they've exited my body, which they felt
emboldened to name.
I have wanted to say my people--
and to be clear, to all people, to any
you imagined by the mind of an embodied
you that was also first imagined.
I am interested in repair without shame.
I am interested in restitution with anger.
I am interested in anger as love,
in having anyone who hears the phrase see
it vanish into the edge of what they know,
to know how far I mean it to reach.
My people, as redundancy, as symbol of the first truth,
immutable, almost banal in its assertion.
If you are on this Earth, you are of this Earth."
Thanks for the snaps, Tyler.
I like snaps.
Feel free y'all.
Thanks.
I mean, don't feel forced, but feel free.
[LAUGHTER]